“IF YOU suffer from asthma or chronic lung infections, you are more
vulnerable to air pollution in the aftermath of a cold,” Ken Donaldson from
Napier University told the Edinburgh International Science Festival this
week.
Donaldson and his colleagues inserted a cold virus gene into human lungs in
the lab. The gene persists after symptoms have disappeared. When they exposed
lung cells to PM10s, tiny particles with a diameter of less than 10 micrometres,
they found up to a fivefold increase in the proteins that trigger
inflammation.
